What caused severe hailstorm in Delhi-NCR

​Manali in Noida?

A spell of rain on Thursday evening, the second of the day, saw parts of Delhi and the National Capital Region enveloped in a blanket of white.

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Agencies

​Disruptions

The hailstorm gladdened the hearts of people, but disrupted both traffic and flight operations. The accompanying thundershowers brought the mercury plummeting by several degrees.

Perhaps the people had not expected the unusual sight of their surroundings covered by hailstones when they woke up to light rain and gradually saw the minimum temperature moving up to 15 degrees Celsius during the day, six notches above normal.

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Agencies

​Factors Responsible

Delhi's regional Met department attributed the hailstorm to a mixture of factors.

“A hailstorm is not unusual for this time of the year,” said B P Yadav, head of IMD’s regional centre. “However, a number of factors contributed to making it severe. There was a confluence of winds coming from Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea which met over northern India. At the same time, jet streams, which are strong winds, were passing over the northern plains and helped in deep cloud formation at the lower level.” Cold winds and low temperatures, with a western disturbance bringing showers over northern India, lead to thundercloud and hail formation.

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Agencies

​Rains

The Met office says rains are likely to continue overnight, though the weather will clear up by Friday afternoon.

The maximum temperature in Delhi on Thursday was 19.1 degrees Celsius, four below normal for this time of the season. The capital recorded “trace” rainfall till 8.30 am, but 4.8mm by 8.30 pm.

Palam, Lodhi Road and Ridge recorded 3.2mm, 3.8mm and 3.4mm of rainfall, respectively. The humidity levels in the last 24 hours, meanwhile, oscillated between 89 and 100 per cent.

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BCCL

​Air quality improves

The downpour helped Delhi’s air quality to come down to moderate, with the Air Quality Index at 176.

“The influence of western disturbances, scattered rain and high wind speed significantly improved the air quality,” SAFAR explained.

Tomorrow too, the air quality is expected to be moderate, but SAFAR said thereafter the wind speed is expected to slow down and air quality will deteriorate.

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Agencies

​Forecast

Agencies forecast a return of foggy conditions over the next few days.

IMD predicted shallow to moderate fog followed by clear skies on Friday.

“The maximum temperature could be around 19 degrees, the minimum around 10 degrees Celsius. The minimum will fall on Saturday to around 7 degrees Celsius,” a met official said.(Text: TNN)